What do people do to pivot away from Accounting (In a corporate setting)?
Hi, I am Sydney-based, CA-qualified and have been in the accounting profession for around 9 years in total, where I started out in Big 4 Audit, before leaving for an industry role as a Senior Financial Accountant (SFA). My total experience as SFA is now around 4 years, split across two large corporates in two different industries, where I am doing your typical month-end tasks/recs/financial reporting/group reporting sort of role.
Tbh I have never liked accounting in the first place, and I simply did accounting at uni and applied for Big 4 audit because I did not know what else to do, and it felt like a very safe and stable choice (which it is).
I am feeling kinda stuck at the moment because having done 4 years of Senior Financial Accountant role, I feel like I naturally should go for a Finance Manager role, but that role naturally requires more aptitude and in-depth knowledge of the accounting standards, which frankly I really do not care about, and the less I have to deal with accounting standards, the better. I feel like this lack of interest in the technical aspect of accounting kinda subconciously leads me to not putting an extra effort in what I do at work. At the moment, I am just sticking it out only to earn the money which admittedly is not too shabby.
At the same time, whenever I applied for a more "commercial" or "forward-looking" sort of roles like commercial finance or FP&A analyst roles, the feedback has always been that the other candidate had more relevant experience, or I may have settle with a bit of a pay cut.
Also it's probably unhelpful, but I don't know what I want to do either, i.e. Even if I go into the FP&A side, there is no guarantee that I would enjoy the job, but I just thought that I won't have to deal with accounting standards and financial reporting much.
I am now wondering for those who manage to get out of the "traditional" corporate accounting or pivot away from it, what did you do? Or how did you end up figuring out what you "actually want to do" - did you just have a go at it and see what works?
I do sometimes think that I probably should have left way way earlier in my career, at least after I got my CA around the 3rd year of my career.